The Berkeley Remix

This season of the Berkeley Remix we’re bringing to life stories about our home — UC Berkeley — from our collection of thousands of oral histories. Please join us for our fourth season, Let There Be Light: 150 Years at UC Berkeley, inspired by the University’s motto, Fiat Lux. Our three episodes this season explore issues of identity — where we’ve been, who we are now, the powerful impact Berkeley’s identity as a public institution has had on student and academic life, and the intertwined history of campus and community.

Episode 2: Berkeley Lightning is about the contributions of UC Berkeley Engineering to the rise of the semiconductor industry in what became known as Silicon Valley in the 1960s and 70s. In contrast to the influential entrepreneurial spirit of a private university like Stanford, Berkeley's status as a public institution had a different impact on Silicon Valley. We focus on the development of the first widely used design program for prototyping microchips. Originally designed by and for students, the software spread like lightning in part because Berkeley, as a public institution, made it available free of charge. The world has not been the same since.

This episode includes audio from the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library, including Paul R. Gray, Professor of Engineering Emeritus, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Dr. Laurence Nagel, CEO Omega Enterprises, PhD from UC Berkeley EECS, and former senior manager at Bell Laboratories (oral history forthcoming).

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS04E02

This season of the Berkeley Remix we’re bringing to life stories about our home — UC Berkeley — from our collection of thousands of oral histories. Please join us for our fourth season, Let There Be Light: 150 Years at UC Berkeley, inspired by the University’s motto, Fiat Lux. Our three episodes this season explore issues of identity — where we’ve been, who we are now, the powerful impact Berkeley’s identity as a public institution has had on student and academic life, and the intertwined history of campus and community.

In Episode 1: Sleeping With The Light On, we’ve come to think of communal living as a tradition for students, a rite of passage and a valuable lesson in community building. But for much of its history, UC Berkeley didn’t even have residence halls! Expanding and improving housing at Berkeley has been on the frontlines of the battle for student welfare throughout the University’s history. In this episode, we explore what home and community has meant to students at Cal, and how accessible spaces have supported social justice movements on and beyond campus.

This episode includes audio from the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, including: Rev. Allen C. Blaisdell, Jackie Goldberg, Frank Inami, Marguerite Kulp Johnston, Edward V. Roberts, and Dorothy Walker. Voiceover of Ruth Norton Donnelly’s interview by Shanna Farrell. Audio from the “Which Campus?” video courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

Read the written version: https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/2019/07/25/the-berkeley-remix-podcast-season-4-episode-1-sleeping-with-the-light-on-housing-and-community-at-berkeley/

This season of the Berkeley Remix we’re bringing to life stories about our home — UC Berkeley — from our collection of thousands of oral histories. Please join us for our fourth season, Let There Be Light: 150 Years at UC Berkeley, inspired by the University’s motto, Fiat Lux. Our three episodes this season explore issues of identity — where we’ve been, who we are now, the powerful impact Berkeley’s identity as a public institution has had on student and academic life, and the intertwined history of campus and community.

Episode 3: Berkeley After Dark is about the connection between the history of farm-to-table eating and the campus community. Alice Waters helped pioneer the concept of eating local, seasonal, and organic food at her restaurant, Chez Panisse, located just a few blocks from campus on Shattuck Avenue. This grew out of her combined love of feeding people and political activism, evolved into a culinary revolution. And it couldn’t have happened without UC Berkeley. The intertwined history between campus and the community gave Chez Panisse an audience, and a workforce, creating a symbiotic relationship.

This episode includes audio from the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, including: Christopher Lee, Narsai David, and Dylan O’Brien. Voiceover of Marion Cunningham’s interview by Amanda Tewes and Paul Bertolli’s interview by John Fragola. Supplemental interviews with Chris Ying.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS04E03

Tells about the fight against turning this open parcel of coastal land into a tourist and business hub.

Bolstered by the creation of the Coastal Commission, the citizens of Santa Cruz organized and challenged the city council’s support of the project, ultimately saving Lighthouse Point. The successful campaign not only came to stand as a testament to the Coastal Commission and its influence in many coastal communities, but also would prove a watershed moment in the history of Santa Cruz.

Credits:

Featured interviewees: Gary Patton, Katherine Beiers, Andrew Schiffrin

Interviews, research, writing: Todd Holmes

Audio production: Allie Cheroutes

Narration: Paul Burnett

This is the pilot episode of the forthcoming Coastal Tales: The Long Struggle to Preserve California’s Coast, a 15-part podcast produced by the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley in partnership with the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. Interviews are part of the Oral History Center’s California Coastal Commission project and you can access the interviews in full here: ucblib.link/OHC-coast

This interview with UC Berkeley Oral History Center historian Sally Smith Hughes introduces her interviews with the physicians, public health officials, researchers, and nurses who faced the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco in the early 1980s. Paul and Sally also discuss the podcast "First Response: AIDS and Community in San Francisco," which is based on Sally's interviews from the 1990s.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS03E00

Our final episode looks at how the collaboration between community members and health officials ultimately came to redefine care for AIDS. We hear medical staff and community members describe the multi-pronged approach developed at San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 5b, which combined care, research, social work, and community involvement. Together, health officials and community members pioneered a new way of treating epidemic disease and human suffering—a new way that became known as the San Francisco Model.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS03E06

This episode charts the uphill battle medical researchers faced in securing the needed resources and funding to combat the AIDS epidemic. The discovery of the epidemic coincided with the rise of fiscal and social conservatism in national politics with the election of Ronald Reagan. Public health budgets were slashed and there was little sympathy or support to fight a disease affecting gay men. In this episode, medical researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and University of California San Francisco’s KS Clinic reveal how they had to improvise in this context to piece together the crucial resources needed to make headway against the epidemic.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS03E05

This episode explores a crisis that threatened to derail the developing collaboration between public health officials and the gay community. By the late 1970s, researchers had identified the city’s bathhouses as sites for the spread of disease, especially among gay men. Facing ineffective educational initiatives and a new, fast-growing epidemic, San Francisco’s Pubic Health Department ordered the closure of bathhouses in October 1984. The bonds of trust that had slowly developed between the public health service and the gay community began to fall apart, as emergency action to address the spread of disease collided with the legacy of homophobia and persecution. Here public health officials and physicians within the gay community discuss the Bathhouse Crisis and the strained relations that resulted.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS03E04

Episode 3 –The Gay-Positive Health Community Before AIDS

This episode takes a step back and examines the efforts of public health officials in San Francisco to establish a relationship of trust with the gay community. For years, homophobia had pushed this ostracized community, gay men in particular, to seek underground health services at establishments where they could receive treatment from sympathetic or at least non-judgmental professionals. By the 1970s, however, bridges began to develop between health officials and the gay community, just as physicians within the community itself started to form their own public health networks. In this episode, we hear from practitioners from inside and outside the gay community on the work undertaken to create a gay-positive health response to rising epidemics before the arrival of AIDS in the city.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS03E03

This episode takes a look at the medical community’s first encounter with AIDS in San Francisco. As reports began to circulate of a mysterious disease affecting gay men, fear spread even faster than the virus itself. Here medical researchers and healthcare professionals discuss how the health community grappled with this fear of the unknown: from medical institutions and staff refusing to treat patients, to the internal conflict of the health practitioners themselves as they faced the reality that their pursuit to save lives could very well risk their own. Ultimately, the management of fear—among patients, the public, and the health community itself—proved to be one of the first steps in the city’s medical response to AIDS.

Read the full episode transcript here: https://ucblib.link/OHCPodcastS03E02